Battle Titans Bot Profile: the Ravager

That’s the optimistic tagline of the Ravager, one of Battle of Titans‘ three Medium-level bots. Of course, the M.A.O. mech also shares this designation, but it’s fair to look at the Ravager as a bit of a “generalist” bot. It’s also not a whole lot larger than the Cossack-esque Little Shon, which we covered in our last Battle of Titans feature.

Here’s the “Battle of Titans 101″ for War Robots players I covered in the previous article, repeated for convenience.

Battle Titans features five mechs in beta. One Light (Little Shon), three Medium (Ravager, M.A.O., and Nelly), and one Heavy (the Tirpitz). The classification system of bots and weapons will be very familiar to War Robots players, but in addition to hardpoints many bots have an extra slot for what’s being called a “backpack.”

While bots in War Robots have a single health pool, Battle Titans takes a more specific approach much like you’d see in Battletech. Each mech has separate HP values for tower, core, and leg. Many also have a resistance to certain kinds of attacks, “HEAT” (explosives) or “APFS” (projectiles).

Finally, while War Robots offers you an (unlockable) five-slot hangar, Battle Titans takes a sort of “hangar points” approach. You have a certain allotment of space in your hangar, and some robots take up more than others. You can fit a trio of Little Shons in the space taken up by a Tirpitz, for instance. This is a clever way of ensuring some balance in what players bring to the battlefield.

This smaller profile of the Ravager is a defensive bonus- the harder a target is to hit, the longer it tends to live. And don’t let the small size fool you- the Ravager actually has slightly more HP in aggregate than the larger M.A.O. (+500HP more in the leg region).

By way of contrast, the HP values of the Ravager are around four times the durability of the Little Shon, as befits a light versus medium bot in this environment. It’s been noted that the Battle of Titans pace of play is markedly different than War Robots, favoring a more drawn-out tactical engagement and less arcade-action. Consider that the health difference between the Cossack (39,000 at Level 1) and the Boa (the fattest Medium with 94,000 health) is comparatively narrower, and some of the distinction between the games becomes more apparent.

The Ravager also has a 30% resistance to projectile weapons (APFS), giving it a solid degree of all-around survivability. Unsurprisingly, the Ravager takes up two inventory slots, which is the standard for Medium bots.

Now for some bad news. While it might be exciting to learn that the Ravager is the second-fastest bot in the game, in reality it moves closer to the speed of smell. The Little Shon zips about at 63 kmph. The Ravager? Less than half at 29. That said, the Ravager is also the fastest bot in the game thanks to its Sprint ability, which lets it zoom at nearly three times its normal speed.

The Little Shon came equipped with two Light hardpoints and a Light backpack slot. The stock, off-the-shelf Ravager adds in a Heavy hardpoint, and bumps that backpack up to Medium. While the game’s tooltip cautions that mixed hardpoints can be “hard to master,” mixed-range weapons aren’t anything new to those cutting their teeth on War Robots. Like Little Shon, the Ravager packs a pair of short-range Manglers, machine guns with an optimal range of 50 and a max of 250.

The Hammer, meanwhile, has an optimal distance of 250, and can still get in for damage at double that. A one-shot cannon, the ideal sequence of action is to use the Hammer as opponents move to engage, then get stuck in with the Manglers once range is closed. All the while, the Javelin backpack weapon can be launching missiles at the enemy every 20 seconds or so. A fire-and-forget weapon that doesn’t even need line of sight, it’s a nice added burst on a longer cooldown. It, too, caps out at 500m, with an optimal range of 400m.

Faster and sturdier than other bots in its weight class, the Ravager indeed has a sort of all-around approach that makes up for its lighter weapon loadout. The M.A.O. is reminiscent of a Fury in that it packs in a trio of Heavy weapons, while the spider-like Nelly is Patton-esque with four Light slots. With all three packing a Medium backpack, this makes the Ravager more of a skirmisher/raider bot than the others, ideally suited to more hit and run rather than direct engagement. The short-range Manglers mean you still need to engage at close range for maximum effectiveness, but the high Sprint speed means you can jet out of trouble if things start going South.

Hopefully, the closed beta will open up to more individuals in the near future, and we can start getting in some games in earnest! For the now, these “bot previews” will have to do.